


Ritual

by sharlatanka



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Found Family Has Weird Habits, Gen, Rita and Larry have old people habits, yes this is still Rita/Larry platonic bond-heavy because it’s my brand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-31 22:13:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18322997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharlatanka/pseuds/sharlatanka
Summary: Vic adjusts to having Roommates, and understands how his new roommates maladjust.





	Ritual

Victor Stone had never had a roommate. Hell, he never even had a sibling. He never had to share a bed, or a bathroom, until Paraguay— or, more accurate to say  _ on the way  _ to Paraguay (Rita informed everyone so many times about her movie of the same name that he was convinced that she was going senile, despite her non-aging body). 

 

He found it hard to sleep there, between Cliff, who pretended to sleep, faking a snore for hours upon hours as if it was an extended aum meditation. Larry placed a Geiger counter between himself and Vic, with an absolutely worrying “don’t worry about it.” Larry was also a chronic insomniac, and not being able to remove his bandages was only making it worse. He tossed and turned in his sleep like a cooking pancake. Vic kept an ear to the Geiger counter to make sure  _ he _ wasn’t also getting cooked. 

 

The bed with the girls fared much better. Babydoll jumped out at the chance to snuggle with Rita, and Rita pretended to object. Babydoll slept like a rock with her arms tightly around Rita’s waist. It was a good thing, too; Rita’s REM cycle was wreaking rather severe havoc, and her gelatinous what-was-legs-a-few-hours-ago had crept over Babydoll’s own legs like a fungus. Other than that it was a touching scene. Jane or Hammerhead would yell at Rita for it when they woke up. 

 

When Jane was done yelling at Rita while they were both cooped up in the bathroom doing whatever it was women did in the bathroom— writing on the mirror with Rita’s Chanel lipstick and convincing Rita’s legs to go back to being legs— Jane left for coffees with the money that Rita hadn’t had to yet spend on the vending machine. 

 

Larry put his head in his hands and sighed. His compulsively rattling knee was the only indication that the normally calm man was reaching the end of his scorched nerves.

 

“A little too much time with the family?” Vic joked. He couldn’t tell if Larry thought it was funny. 

 

Cliff did. He cackled, “He’s just upset because he and Rita are creatures of habit. Old people that eat dinner at 4:30 and go to bed at 8 p.m.”

 

Rita cracked the bathroom door open and hissed, “ _ Some  _ of us have  _ conditions to manage. _ You want that spirit to pop out of Larry and never come back? You want Larry to fall over in an unfamiliar place and, I don’t know, fall on a  _ knife?”  _

 

“Rita…” Larry chided, although it had a gentle edge, and a grateful tone, like always. 

 

Cliff howled. “A  _ knife?  _ Like an upright  _ knife?  _ Maybe if Larry went unconscious over an open dishwasher.” 

 

“A dishwasher? What is that—  _ nevermind—  _ sorry you don’t have any sympathy for those of us who find ritual valuable.”

 

“Naw, Rita— I’m having a hell of a time! I haven’t taken a road trip in… decades! Did you know there’s a cat outside?” 

 

She rolled her eyes and slammed the door.

 

“We’re both on edge because certain… things require that we be alone for a few hours. It’s only when you’re out of the manor that you realize all that room is a necessity.” 

 

Upon their return to the manor, Victor began to notice that it wasn’t all necessity. 

 

Every day Larry and Rita made a large feast, and another smaller plate. Larry couldn’t eat around other people, due to all that protective gauze getting in the way. So he sat across from Rita at the dining table while she ate a four course meal for two, and they talked. When Vic asked around about it, Hammerhead told him that they had been doing it before Jane had arrived. It was an exclusive club full of secrets, Hammerhead said with a snort. 

 

“They’re like an old married couple,” Cliff joked, eyes on his train set, to which he’d originally called Vic over to check some faulty wiring. “Except they don’t fuck.” 

 

“I guess doing that every day makes them feel safe, and normal.”

 

“Heh,” Hammerhead smirked. “Normal? Why don’t you go down there now and watch Rita unhinge her jaw to swallow some chicken bones.” 

 

Cliff giggled. Hammerhead caught on. “As if you can laugh about it, toy man.” They threw up their hands and muttered in a sarcastic tone over the incredibly detailed race track that by that point had overtaken most of Cliff’s room. “Cliff Town: where nobody is a robot and where everyone is happy. You have your thing.”

 

“Not true.” He mumbled. “Everyone is in here.” 

 

“Not  _ me.” _

 

“Well Hammerhead, you never  _ asked.”  _

 

Hammerhead snorted, and spit on the floor on their way out. “I won’t.” 

 

Victor grimaced. 

 

“Rita will take care of it.” Cliff advised calmly.

 

“That doesn’t sound… right.”

 

“I know how it sounds. She has this…  _ thing _ about cleaning. Every few days she’ll scrub the place sterile, all in a frenzy, and won’t let us help her.” 

 

“Why?”

 

“I dunno where you came from, but here there’s not much but  _ time _ . Lots and lots’a  _ time.  _ And she needs it. Like… she needs to feel like she can control something in her life. She says that it’s because she’s the only one that always seems to find herself slinking around the floor, so she’d rather she know it for herself how it gets clean, and that Larry is prone to infections, but that’s not all of it. You just let her call you a slob and move on with your day. I guess we all have a  _ thing.  _ That’s Rita’s. Larry talks to flowers. Actually, Larry and Rita have a lot of  _ things _ together. Mine is cars.” 

 

“What’s Jane’s?” Vic flicked a switch on the table and watched the little town light up and power off, light up and power off. 

 

“Leaving.” He mumbled, with a tinge of sadness, straightening a pine tree on one of the track’s hills. “What’s yours?” 

 

“I…hah,” he laughed, maybe a little too haughtily for current company. “I don’t have one.” 

 

“Hm.” 

 

He left Cliff alone to his 1:10 scale sanctuary, and returned to his new, empty room. Alone (but not without Grid, of course). He laid down on his bed and stared up at the cracked ceiling. The faint sounds of tiny little motors, silverware clinking, and Hammerhead crashing the evening tea club drifted up through the vents. A scary feeling crept up through Vic’s gut and settled in his chest. In the hubbub of moving out, of dealing with Mr. Nobody for the first time and the things that Vic had been shown, he began to feel fear. And sadness. And abandonment, somehow. And distrust. And anger. And helplessness. He began to feel all of those things that Generation X escapes through screens. Victor’s screen was his brain, tapped into his emotions. He closed his one eye, but the images kept coming. The explosion. What he had said. What he had heard. 

 

He was pulled away from it all when suddenly the noises from the vents changed. Cliff, and Larry, and Rita, and Jane were all talking together. Wondering if it was an evening meeting they decided to have without the new guy, he left his room and listened from the stairs. 

 

“Now, what’ll it be tonight?  _ Two Trains to El Paso  _ or—  _ Jane,  _ would you pick where you’re going to sit?? You’re making me nervous.” 

 

“Fine!” A cackle. 

 

“That’s  _ Larry’s  _ seat!”

 

“It’s fine, Rita—“ 

 

“ _ Feet off the couch Jane!!!”  _

 

“Hey Rita what’s the one where you play that gangster’s girlfriend?” 

 

“ _ A Shot in the Dark.”  _

 

“How bout it?” 

 

“Well Cliff it was only a supporting role—“ 

 

“That means your performance has to be, you know… extra nuanced, or whatever.” 

 

“Cliff, you flatter me… I know you just want to watch a movie with a gunfight. But fine… put it in while I make myself a drink.”

 

And then, silence. Until the swelling orchestra of a long golden age Hollywood credit sequence opened.”

 

“Rita Farr, Rita Farr! That’s you!” Accompanied by clapping. 

 

“Oh… Babydoll, you won’t want to watch this.” 

 

“Why not?”

 

“It’s violent… and scary.” 

 

It wasn’t a meeting at all. It was a movie night. Victor finally ventured down the stairs to the gathered group, seated on perfectly antique couches, perfectly darned over the decades by a goddess of the silver screen who intended the living room as her shrine. 

 

“Vic! Vic!” Babydoll whispered, and pulled his arm until he sat next to her. “P.S…. this movie might get scary.” 

 

He smiled slightly, not yet totally used to Jane’s personalities. He watched the others by the light of the screen. Babydoll, between Cliff and Victor, held on to both of them for courage. The faintest hint of interest could be read from Cliff’s tilting metal head as he waited for the fire fight scene. Larry’s as always, expressionless, although he could hear him reciting lines along with Rita. Her head was on the plush shoulder of Larry’s sweater, and in between lines she took healthy sips of a gin and tonic. Her eyes were wet with tears, but in the light of the television they glittered like gems.

 

“ _ Oh but Ronald, I don’t want to leave you here.” _

 

_ “Alice, if you don’t get the hell outta dodge you’ll lose more than me. You’re gonna lose your life, baby.”  _

 

_ “For you I’d risk it. You think a woman can’t handle a gun? You think I’ve never felt that cold steel in my hand and wanted to shoot a bastard in the heart?” _

 

_ “Oh, Alice…! Remind me to never get on your bad side.”  _

 

_ “My bad side? Well Ronald, she’s a hell of a lot more fun.”  _

 

The saturated technicolor and the presence of a warm and a cold body next to him calmed Victor’s nerves. The movie wasn’t too bad, itself. He began to realize that they didn’t actually mind being cramped together. That is, if it was for their nightly ritual. Like Cliff said, and like Vic began to realize, everybody had to have one. Maybe this could be Victor’s.

 

He’d have to introduce them to some different films though. Maybe even get a Blu-ray player. He was sure that Cliff and Larry would go crazy for  _ Transformers. _


End file.
